Sm doped BNT–BZT lead-free ceramic for energy storage applications with broad temperature range

Dielectric ceramics with good temperature stability and excellent energy storage performances are in great demand for numerous electrical energy storage applications. In this work, xSm doped 0.5Bi0.51Na0.47TiO3–0.5BaZr0.45Ti0.55O3 (BNT–BZT − xSm, x = 0–0.04) relaxor ferroelectric lead-free ceramics were synthesized by high temperature solid-state sintering for energy storage applications. The grain sizes of BNT–BZT − xSm ceramics exhibited gradually decrease with the increase of Sm doping content, and the temperature stability of dielectric properties were improved due to the significantly reduced dielectric constant at depolarization temperature (Td). It’s worth noting that a good temperature stability with the variation of dielectric constant at − 50–200 °C (Δε) less than 15% was obtained in the BNT–BZT − 0.04Sm ceramic. A high recoverable energy storage density Wrec = 1.12 J/cm3 and high energy storage efficiency η = 89.6%, together with excellent temperature stability from 25 to 200 °C and fast charge–discharge t0.9 = 0.655 µs were achieved in BNT–BZT − 0.04Sm ceramic, demonstrating its potential application for future pulse electric device candidate.